Researchers survey why some folks maintain sturdy attitudes to science while others are extra impartial.
Survey of over 2,000 adults within the UK identifies potential pitfalls of science communication.
Why do folks maintain extremely variable attitudes in the direction of well-evidenced science? For a few years researchers centered on what folks learn about science, pondering that “to know science is to like it.” However do individuals who assume they know science really know science? A brand new research revealed on January 24th within the open entry journal PLOS Biology by Cristina Fonseca of the Genetics Society, UK; Laurence Hurst of the Milner Centre for Evolution, College of Tub, UK; and colleagues, finds that folks with sturdy attitudes are likely to imagine they perceive science, whereas neutrals are much less assured. Total, the research revealed that folks with sturdy adverse attitudes to science are usually overconfident about their stage of understanding.
Whether or not it’s vaccines, local weather change, or GM meals, societally essential science can evoke sturdy and opposing attitudes. Understanding the right way to talk science requires an understanding of why folks could maintain such extraordinarily completely different attitudes to the identical underlying science. The brand new research carried out a survey of over 2,000 UK adults, asking them each about their attitudes to science and their perception in their very own understanding. A number of prior analyses discovered that people which can be adverse in the direction of science are likely to have comparatively low textbook data however sturdy self-belief of their understanding. With this perception as foundational, the crew sought to ask whether or not sturdy self-belief underpinned all sturdy attitudes.
The crew centered on genetic science and requested attitudinal questions, akin to: “Many claims about the advantages of recent genetic science are vastly exaggerated.” Individuals might say how a lot they agreed or disagreed with such a press release. In addition they requested questions on how a lot they imagine they perceive about such science, together with: “Once you hear the time period DNA, how would you rate your understanding of what the term means.” All individuals were scored from zero (they know they have no understanding) to one (they are confident they understand). The team discovered that those at the attitudinal extremes – both strongly supportive and strongly anti-science – have very high self-belief in their own understanding, while those answering neutrally do not.
Psychologically, the team suggest, this makes sense: to hold a strong opinion you need to strongly believe in the correctness of your understanding of the basic facts. The current team could replicate the prior results finding that those most negative tend also not to have high textbook knowledge. By contrast, those more accepting of science both believe they understand it and scored well on the textbook fact (true/false) questions.
When it was thought that what mattered most for scientific literacy was scientific knowledge, science communication focused on passing information from scientists to the public. However, this approach may not be successful, and in some cases can backfire. The present work suggests that working to address the discrepancies between what people know and what they believe they know may be a better strategy.
Professor Anne Ferguson-Smith, President of the Genetics Society and co-author of the study comments, “Confronting negative attitudes towards science held by some people will likely involve deconstructing what they think they know about science and replacing it with more accurate understanding. This is quite challenging.”
Hurst concludes, “Why do some people hold strong attitudes to science whilst others are more neutral? We find that strong attitudes, both for and against, are underpinned by strong self-confidence in knowledge about science.”
Reference: “People with more extreme attitudes towards science have self-confidence in their understanding of science, even if this is not justified” by Cristina Fonseca, Jonathan Pettitt, Alison Woollard, Adam Rutherford, Wendy Bickmore, Anne Ferguson-Smith and Laurence D. Hurst, 24 January 2023, PLOS Biology.
DOI: 10.1371/journal.pbio.3001915
The work was enabled by funding from The Genetics Society to the Chair of their Public Engagement committee (AW). No grant number specified. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.
